Jeff discovers that the Sangean WR-2 loses time when playing radio

I wanted you to know that my Sangean WR-2 keeps perfect time when I don’t play the radio, but when I do play the radio I lose 25 minutes; the clock is 25 minutes slow in other words. I’ve read other complaints from Sangean owners, including from those who own the Sangean HDR-18. Some say it has something to do with RDS. Have you heard of this problem? It’s annoying because I have to reset my clock every morning.

Wow–an otherwise excellent radio that prominently features a clock should never have this problem. This problem essentially renders the clock useless. I’m not sure what would cause this unless it’s incorrectly pulling time data from the RDS function?

Post readers: Have you noticed this fault in the WR-2, WR-18 or other similar models? Please comment.

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11 thoughts on “Jeff discovers that the Sangean WR-2 loses time when playing radio”

I remember that the Sangean WR-22 would do that me when I have the RDS time feature turned on. It seemed like the time would be completely wrong after a few days. I figured out if you let stations stations automatically adjust the time, it could mess with the clock (for better or worse). I just turned off the feature and that stays on the right time until a power outage happens (then would have to reset it since the WR-22 doesn’t have a battery to save to time during power outages).

I’ve had this same radio for over a year…and regularly have the same basic time loss issue…though not as often. Have talked to Sangean tech support multiple times. The only advice they offered is to turn off the RDS, which I did. That didn’t fix the problem. It is a continuing issue which is really too bad…otherwise, it’s a pretty nice radio. For this reason, I give it a “not recommended.”

I have the ATS 909X and have to be very careful about which local FM station I am listening too with the auto time set activated. MANY of the stations in my are off when using them to set the time. One of them is off by 12 hours! A few stations don’t adjust their clock signal for daylight savings time which the 909X then overrides and still others are off by random minutes. I thought this was a really cool feature with RDS but I’ve come to just leave it off. I can’t imagine what would happen if you used this to set a clock when traveling – you might miss your meeting by 12 hours! Ha.

Most radios like this have a setting where you choose to have the time automatically set via RDS or not. In fact, Sangean’s ATS909 and it’s previous version (had one, but forget the model) both have that feature. A check of the WR2 manual would probably list it. And yes, there are many stations whose RDS time functions (and HD stations as well) are way off. We have the same problem here in Philly.

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